Pa. lawmaker wants to bring back registration stickers

Just when you thought you no longer needed a sticker on your license plate, one Pennsylvania lawmaker said he wants to bring them back.

Vehicles currently do not need a registration sticker, and haven’t needed one since Dec. 31, 2016. Without them, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) calculated the state would save up to $3 million annually.

Two years later, Berks County Republican Rep. Barry Jozwiak said that’s not true. And, he thinks PennDOT’s attempt to modernize the Commonwealth’s registration process isn’t working out.

"Many PA vehicles are simply not registered because there is no way for PennDOT to identify a valid registration,” Jozwiak wrote in a memo to his fellow lawmakers. “In 2017 alone, PennDOT saw a $22 million reduction in the amount of fees collected for both new and renewal vehicle registrations in just the passenger car category of vehicles.”

PennDOT had encouraged lawmakers to rid taxpayers — and vehicle owners — of the cumbersome process.

“Effective December 31, 2016, customers will still have all currently available service channels to renew their registration; however, they will also be able to enjoy the convenience of renewing their registration online from home or a mobile device, printing and signing their permanent registration credential,” according to PennDOT’s website. "With this enhancement to our online registration process, customers will no longer print a temporary registration credential nor will they need to wait for the delivery of their permanent credentials to be mailed to them from PennDOT.”

Law enforcement in the United States and Canada have electronic access to PennDOT’s database to search for a vehicle’s registration status, so everything should have remained business as usual, PennDOT officials had said.

And, a Penn State research study, completed in 2013, determined registration stickers had no overall impact on vehicle registration compliance, which PennDOT relied upon to help influence the change.

However, modernization isn’t always the way to go, according to Jozwiak, who said he plans to introduce legislation that will create "a new two-in-one sticker to be placed on a vehicle’s license plate.” The sticker would indicate a vehicle both passed inspection and is registered with the Commonwealth, he said.

"Law enforcement is now without a significant tool previously used to legally identify and stop unregistered and uninsured vehicles,” Jozwiak said.

North Carolina and Texas require a similar sticker to the one Jozwiak is endorsing, which has yielded “good results,” he noted.

"The creation of this new sticker will address all of the issues that have arisen since the elimination of the original registration sticker,” he wrote. “This new two-in-one sticker will be placed on the license plate of the vehicle, thus restoring law enforcement’s ability to identify vehicles that are not properly inspected, registered or insured in the Commonwealth. The new two-in-one sticker will streamline the inspection and registration process for the convenience of the consumer. It will help to ensure that all vehicles in the Commonwealth are both inspected as well as legally registered and in doing so will restore the lost revenue that PennDOT claims it so desperately needs.”

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